


The Lesson

by Endangered_Slug



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Family life in the Dark Castle, Gen, family fic, rcij
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-25
Updated: 2015-07-25
Packaged: 2018-04-11 04:42:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4421780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Endangered_Slug/pseuds/Endangered_Slug
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gift for the wonderful kireiscorner on Tumblr for Rumbelle Christmas in July! Their prompts were: Rumbelle training (playfully competing) Lucinda. (Lucinda is their daughter just to clarify)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lesson

**Author's Note:**

> Note: I shamelessly borrowed the fictional elements from The Mouse that Roared by Leonard Wibberley and Other Space because I suck.

**Four**

“One, two, Papa’s coming for you…”

Lucinda covered her mouth with her hands, holding in a giggle. She was on the third floor in the west wing and her papa had found her three times so far.

“Three, four, better shut the door…”

Lucinda giggled again because she wasn’t behind a door, she was behind her favorite suit of armor. Her mama polished it once, she said. Her mama said that when she first arrived at the Dark Castle the suit of armor, that particular one, was a dull gray-black and pocked with dents from a fierce battle. Mama told her that after she cleaned it, back when she had to clean things for Papa, the armor changed color. It wasn’t a dull gray-black anymore, but a shining gold that glimmered in the summer sun. At least that’s what her mama told her and her mama never lied so it must be true.

Papa said he wore it once when he was a brave knight, but Lucinda knew that her papa loved to tell stories that were fun to hear, but sometimes weren’t always true.

“Five, six, better pick up sticks…” Papa’s voice was closer now, at least up to the third landing, and it tripped into the air, winging its way to tickle her ears.  

The suit of armor stood tall next to a wide and deep window and on certain days during the summer, it would cast golden beams of light over the walls — more if you wiggled it. Mama said it was something called refraction. Papa told her that the suit of armor was magical and it was the spirit of the brave man who first wore it coming out to play with her.

Mama was sweet and smart and soft and knew things, but Papa was fun and Lucinda liked to play with him when he was home from his deals.

Lucinda didn’t understand what these deals were that made Papa leave the house so often, but her mama told her it had to do with The Bae and bringing him home. The Bae was Papa’s first child and when he came home she would have someone else to play with. She didn’t ask Papa about The Bae often because whenever she did her Papa got sad and would go to his spinning wheel in the corner and spend hours spinning and spinning and spinning.

Mama said thinking about The Bae hurt Papa’s heart.

Mama said that Papa saved her more than once and, one time, had caught her when she’d fallen from the top of a ladder. Her papa was very strong.

Papa said Mama had floated to the ground like an angel and was as light as a feather to hold and that she was the bravest person he’d ever met.

Mama told her that he’d saved her village from ogres, once.  Papa said that Mama had done it herself, bravely and selflessly and tamed a beast besides.

Lucinda didn’t know what half of it meant, but she knew the castle walls had been spelled so that she wouldn’t hurt herself. Whenever she tripped, it felt as if she landed on a cushion of air, bouncing softly two or three times before landing back on her feet. Sharp corners smooshed like rubber when she ran against them with her chubby knees and the wildfire vine that grew up around her window felt as soft as her kitten’s whiskers whenever she stroked its thorny leaves.

“Seven, eight, better close the gate…”

Mama thought her papa was being silly, but Papa would twitter a funny little laugh and twitch his fingers, saying something about not on his watch. Only Papa didn’t carry a watch. Lucinda looked for it once, but she only found a large hour glass, bigger than her, sitting on a table in a room that should have been locked but wasn’t. There was an inch of bone white sand resting in the bottom half of the glass while the top half was near to full. The thing that caught Lucinda’s attention, though, was the fact that the grains of sand weren’t falling at all. Someone had stoppered it somehow and she crawled up onto the table in order to get a better look because no one should have been able to do that — not without magic — and she wanted to know more.

Papa had found her there minutes later and turned white and the room had been sealed shut ever since.

Papa said he charmed the castle to keep her safe. He didn’t want any nasty surprises to reach out and hurt her. Lucinda thought he was the best friend anyone could ever have.

“Nine, ten… Gotcha!”

Lucinda squealed as her papa’s rough fingers poked her in the ribs, tickling until she curled up into a little ball. He picked her up, holding her close to check her over — another thing Mama said was silly — and when he saw she was unharmed, he tossed her in the air until she nearly touched the ceiling and caught her on the way down.

“Jus’ like Mama?” Lucinda asked through her giggles.

Papa got a funny look on his face before poking her on the nose. “Just like Mama,” he agreed before tossing her up a couple more times for good measure.

When they were done laughing, she took his finger and he led her up the long winding staircase to his tower where he showed her how to mix two powders together to make something new.

“This is like us,” he told her seriously. “You have your mama,” he said, holding up a small vial of blue powder, pouring a few granules into a wooden bowl. He set that aside and picked up a green colored powder. “And this is your papa.” And when he sprinkled the green onto the blue, they didn’t make a greeny-blue or a bluey-green as she expected, but a golden, shimmering dust that looked like stars.

“And this is you,” Papa said, swirling the bowl so the sand shifted this way and that. “You’re more precious, of course.”

“I don’t get it,” she said, poking a finger at the sand. It came away glowing and she rubbed her fingers together to spread it out before dragging it along her arms, smiling. She looked like her papa. “Can I play wit’ it?”

Papa brought down more sand of all colors and she made cakes as he worked at his bench. He pretended to eat them, complimented her on her tuneless singing, and by dinner time she was covered in a fine purple dust.

“Would you like to work with me again tomorrow?” he asked seriously.

“‘Kay.”

* * *

 

**Eight**

“No, no, Lucy, the other way! Oh. dearie me.”

Lucy looked down at the wheel, the straw broken into slivers and the spindle lay bare with nary a golden thread to be seen. She’d failed. Again.

Lucy kicked the spinning wheel out of frustration. “Stupid wheel.”

“Your mama can’t do it either,” her papa gently said with a fond smile.

Lucinda’s eyes furrowed and she stuck her lip out in an angry pout. “Don’t be mean! Mama can do _anything_.” She turned back to the wheel, glaring at it.

His eyes sparkled with mirth. “Your mama can do many things, Lucy, but spinning straw into gold is not one of them.” He drew out a length of golden yarn from a basket on the table and held it up to the light. “I was a gifted spinner, but it was years before I learned how to do this.”

“You have magic,” Lucy said.

He shrugged, dropping the gold and considered her thoughtfully. “You’re only eight, Lucy. Perhaps you don’t have it in you yet.”

“Magic?” she asked, confused, looking at her papa. He’d told her he wasn’t a big man, but Lucy thought he was as tall as a mountain. Or maybe a very large hill.

“Yes,” he agreed, absently. “Among other things.” He looked at her, then, cheekily chucking her under the chin with a couple of fingers. “You’re incredibly smart, just like your mother. I think you’ll pick it up eventually. Still,” he mused, turning towards his potions that were scattered along the table underneath, “I think it’s best if we went back to alchemy.” He looked at her slyly over his shoulder. “D’you want to try to blow something up?”

Lucy brightened up instantly and bounced over to her station at her papa’s work bench, stepping up on a footstool in order to reach the implements set aside just for her use. Blowing things up was nearly as much fun as shooting the bow that never missed and she’d tried that hundreds of times.

“Now, Pumpkin, do you want to go for size?” he asked holding up a green bottle in his right hand. “Or sound?” he said, lifting a purple bottle in his left and giving her a wink.

“Sound,” she determined after thinking it over for a moment, reaching over with grabby hands.

Her papa tsked at her and held the bottle back, making sure she first secured soft cotton in her ears lest she damage her hearing. A pair of goggles set with amethyst glass brought back from Agrabah safely covered her eyes and an oversized chainmail shirt that had once belonged to her mother completed her preparations and once everything was placed according to his specifications, he handed the purple bottle over.

“Let’s see who can make the biggest noise,” he tittered conspiratorially and Lucy knew they had to work quickly because once they got started it was only a matter of time before Mama came tromping up the stairs to put an end to it. Mama said once that there were limits to even her patience.

Lucy pulled a copper bowl in front of her then looked at him in anticipation.

“Now, Pumpkin, you have the polydenum, what would you add to it to make it louder?” He wiggled his fingers besides his head and widened his eyes dramatically.

Lucy looked over the bottles and jars that she was allowed to touch, trying to determine — to the best of her ability — which one would be best. The copper was fun and it turned everything green and it made a big roar, but she wanted something that would shake the crows out of the rafters. So far they’d proven to be very stubborn.

Not the copper then, but the quadium might do it. She grabbed the bottle and held it up to show her papa.

He looked at her, impressed. “Clever girl,” he told her proudly and he moved the boom-meter over so they could read her score together. It was just a flat piece of metal with a needle hanging over one end and some special paper going through it. Papa told her it recorded sound waves and that it had another name, but to Lucy it was the boom-meter.

At his nod, she poured a small amount of quadium in the bowl, careful not to spill a drop — the last time she spilled something, she’d forgotten about it. Then when she moved on to building clouds in her terrarium — she’d made it rain for days. Papa hadn’t been too pleased then so she made double sure to be extra, especially cautious from then on.

“Very good, Lucy,” he said. “Now what?”

Lucy studied the polydenum. It rattled around in the bottle and she thought that if it was in smaller pieces it might mix better with the quadium.

She shook out a small piece into her mortar and ground it into a fine dust, well, as fine as her patience could stand.

“Intriguing... What made you think of it?” her father asked quietly, peering intently as she worked.

“Might work better if it’s smaller?” she said, looking up at him through her purple-tinted goggles. He turned a funny color when she looked at him with them on and once, when she was a little girl she’d asked him if he colored his skin with a potion and if she could, too. He’d smiled sadly and shook his head and went to his spinning wheel for hours.

She never asked again.

“Good thinking,” he said with a proud grin. “You’re a lot like your mama. Very clever, very intuitive. You would make a fine magician if you wanted to be.”

“I’m gonna be a dragon,” she told him absently, not for the first time.

“That’s right,” he said with a chuckle. “You and Lily are going to rule the skies.

“Mmhmm.”

The powder was as fine as she could get it. She could ask her father for help, but then, if she had the loudest boom, he would also be able to claim credit for it. She wanted to do it all on her own this time.

She set the pestle aside and poured the granules into the copper bowl, turning her head away in anticipation of the—

KABOOOM!

Lucy was knocked right off her stool and into her father’s arms.

“That was a good one!” he said, proudly when the sound dissipated. “Quickly now, before your mama comes running through that door to put a stop to it!”  And he cupped his hands before his mouth, muttering a spell Lucy couldn’t rightly hear. He looked down at her, winked, then threw his hands forward toward the open window.

The resulting boom echoed off the mountains in a shockwave that rattle the windows, shook the crows and blew the very trees back. It went on, echoing back towards the mountains who answered the call again and again, rolling off each other’s echos until the only sound in the world was the one that Papa had made.

It was glorious and short lived.

Mama burst through the door, slamming it against the wall with a loud crack, but it was barely heard over the echoing booms.

Lucy could see her mother’s mouth moving and knew she was shouting at the top of her lungs, but the echoing booms, now multiplied by three, only allowed for some of them to be heard.

“WHAT …. EARTH.... DOING? …. EVER-loving MIND? …. ….. IDEA …..  LOUD …. DO YOU …. THINK …. …. ACT? …. Rum …. SKIN! … SWEAR ….  TURN …. DEAF …. MAKE IT STOP!

And just like that, the noise stopped instantly leaving only an uncomfortable ringing in their ears which her papa would magic away in a minute. Once he stopped laughing.

“Do you find this very funny, Rumple?” Mama asked, lifting an eyebrow at him. She had her hands on her hips, a dish towel hanging from one hand and her face was all scrunched up.

“Oh, Sweetheart. you have no idea,” he tittered. And he moved the scale so that Lucy could see the results.

Lucy clasped her hands over her mouth, but the laughter had already burst out.

“I think I might,” Mama retorted, but there was that telltale twitch of her lips that showed she wasn’t as annoyed as she let on.

“We were merely trying to see who could make the loudest noise.”

“I see.” She looked over at Lucy, her blue eyes gleaming with mischief. “And did your Papa win?”

She shook her head, her honey brown curls bouncing off her face. “Nuh uh.”

Mama’s eyes lit up and she lifted Lucy up, spinning her in a wide circle . “You won, finally! That’s wonderful, darling!”

Lucy sputtered, giving in to the laughter that bubbled up inside her. It was how every alchemy session ended with her papa.

“No!” she giggled, happily, pointing at the boom-meter where it showed the tail end of Belle’s tirade in a wide squiggly path. “You did, Mama!”


End file.
